The Baleful Coven (PFRPG)

Battling a conspiracy to destroy the future empress before she can realize her imperial destiny, you have overcome all who stood in your way. As you set out to cross the endless cold lands at the top of the world, however, your enemies are not so quick to forgive or forget the dead left in your wake. A mother’s love is undying, but so too is her hate. In her eyes, you are murderers, and she will gather dark sisters from far abroad to draw you into a mystic nightmare from which there will be no escape!

This adventure for characters of 6th to 7th level supplements the epic journey through the northern wilds of the Far East Adventure Path campaign. It allows GMs to show the dynamic nature of the campaign world as forces they thought defeated turn out to have allies that do not take the defeat of their kin lightly. While easiest to include as part of the journey through the mountains of the subpolar north as their caravan approaches the arctic, scaling notes suggest methods for leveling up the adventure for use after the arctic crossing as the PCs’ caravan descends into the Eastern Realms. Apart from an Adventure Path, this adventure can be easily dropped into any campaign to infuse it with an air of malevolent witchery.

Designed by Matt Goodall with the Legendary Games design team of Jason Nelson, Neil Spicer, Clinton Boomer, Greg A. Vaughan, Russ Taylor, Jim Groves, and Clark Peterson, with amazing art by Jason Juta and magnificent maps by Rob Lazzaretti. Who better to provide you with supplemental adventure material for your Adventure Path campaign than the very writers of those adventures themselves? Answer: no one. Legendary Games' Adventure Path Plug-Ins supplement and enrich your campaign experience, offering adventures and supporting products that incorporate and expanding upon unique concepts, themes, and rules subsystems introduced in the Adventure Paths while filling in the background characters, items, and locations that make those adventures come alive in delightful (and often dangerous) detail. Legendary Games combines stellar writing talent with innovative layout and product design and top-notch artistic values that we think will bring you back again and again.

Download includes TWO files: a full color version AND a stripped black and white version for easy printing, by popular demand available in either classic vertical (portrait) orientation as well as our legendary horizontal (landscape) orientation.

This being an adventure-review, the following contains SPOILERS. potential players should jump to the conclusion.

Still here? All right! Intended to be used for 6th level characters between installment 2 and 3 of the Jade regent-AP, this pdf kicks off rather starightforwardly - by stranding the PC's caravan in a specifically-crafted demiplane sans escape - a place where the mastermind villains can exact their vengeance. When the PCs are faced by weird dreams seeking to drive them mad and make them see how their actions justify their punishment (in the villain's twisted logic), they'll sooner or later understand that in order to escape this weird place, they'll have to find their tormentors and deal with them. The originators of the dreamplane-prison is an uncommon coven consisting of an annis hag, a winter witch and a white-haired witch, with each of the 3 members having their own section of the dreamplane and its own dangers.

The annis lords over an ice-cold hall in which a jarl and its thanes invite the PCs to partake in their celebrations - while drinking the poisonous mead will seem unwise at first, at least it will keep the undead from attacking them by keeping the rules of hospitability intact. The Winter Witch's demesne is no less exciting, featuring the new CR 4 Arctic Harpspider-monster as well as exciting locales that truly influence the battles.
Finally, the white-haired witch's demesne is set in a lost village, complete with its own pagoda and shadow mastiff-guardians.

Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice a single glitch. the pdf adheres to Legendary Games' drop-dead gorgeous 2-column landscpae standard and the pdf comes with a backgroundless version. The pdf is also available as a portrait-version. The maps. O. M. G. The maps. so beautiful they make the eyes water, the domain's map being one of the finest ever. Each area comes with drop-dead-level paizo-quality-plus gorgeous maps, making me regret that we don't get them as high-res map-packs, but even when printing out the pdf and handing this to your players, their jaws will drop. seriously. The pdf is extensively bookmarked and the artworks are of paizo-level-plus quality with all mayor antagonists getting beautiful, original pieces of artwork and the same holds true for the new creature. And then there also are mood-piece-artworks. WOW.
This sidetrek/plug-in has a simple structure - but it's fluff is glorious! Exciting! Weird! Dream-like! Seriously - even if you don't run the Jade Regent-AP, get this! It's that good! It's a short, sweet adventure brimming with superior production values, cool ideas and a very distinct "fairy-tale gone horribly wrong"-vibe. Final verdict? Easily given 5 stars + seal of approval - this would be worth the price for the maps alone!